Space and Astronomy Megathread (MERGED)

[zeroapoc]

I still think we should work on getting artifical gravity on ships and radiation protection before we bother going any farther than the moon.

I agree as well. If we can't do it right and do it big, we shouldn't bother.

 

[:eek:]

http://mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/interactives/billionpixel/

 

[:eek:]

Found! 3 Super-Earth Planets That Could Support Alien Life

http://www.space.com/21706-habitable-alien-planets-gliese-667c.html

 

[zeroapoc]

It seems all the candidates that have been found are around Red Dwarfs, unless I've missed something. Has anything ever been found around a solar analog?

 

[Mike_D202]

Meh...seeing pin dot sized lights in the sky and calling them "earth-like planets" is stretching it a little. Wake me up when we actually arrive at one of these planets.

 

[Marvolo]

Meh...seeing pin dot sized lights in the sky and calling them "earth-like planets" is stretching it a little. Wake me up when we actually arrive at one of these planets.

Tho these planets are out of eyesight we can use various sensitive spectrometers and instruments to determine their atmospheric composition. Different elements and gases interact with light in different ways so by looking at the light refracted off the planets atmosphere we can tell what is in the atmosphere. These instruments pick up the light even if the planet is just a "dot." Combine this info with where the planet is located in relation to its star combined with the type of star it orbits and we can tell whether it could harbor life or whether it could be similar to earth.

Science...its a hell of a thing.

 

[zeroapoc]

Meh...seeing pin dot sized lights in the sky and calling them "earth-like planets" is stretching it a little.

 

[BrollySupersj]

Meh...seeing pin dot sized lights in the sky and calling them "earth-like planets" is stretching it a little. Wake me up when we actually arrive at one of these planets.

Or, you can wait till 2055, when space based telescopes are so powerful, images of planets light year away, look like this: http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/images/future-extrasolar-planet-detection.jpg

t:

Source is www.futuretimeline.net

 

[Arc-Light]

That's no moon.....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...edible-pictures-look-like-planets-closer.html

 

[BrollySupersj]

That's no moon.....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...edible-pictures-look-like-planets-closer.html

Gorgeous, freaking gorgeous.

 

[Thundercrack85]

Found! 3 Super-Earth Planets That Could Support Alien Life

http://www.space.com/21706-habitable-alien-planets-gliese-667c.html

Even though they may not be ideal for us, the potential discovery that one system (albeit it a multi-star one) can host three life-sustaining planets, is a pretty big deal.

Obviously, it's all "potential", and "hypothetical", but if that turns out to be true, it's a pretty amazing discovery.

 

[Asteroid-Man]

Or, you can wait till 2055, when space based telescopes are so powerful, images of planets light year away, look like this: http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/images/future-extrasolar-planet-detection.jpg

t:

Source is www.futuretimeline.net

That's no moon.....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...edible-pictures-look-like-planets-closer.html

Both of these are awesome.

 

[Mike_D202]

Or, you can wait till 2055, when space based telescopes are so powerful, images of planets light year away, look like this: http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/images/future-extrasolar-planet-detection.jpg

t:

Source is www.futuretimeline.net

THAT'S what I'm talking about

 

[Venom'sDad]

That's no moon.....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...edible-pictures-look-like-planets-closer.html

The ones with Neptune & Jupiter are the best.....respectively.

 

[DareDemon]

Or, you can wait till 2055, when space based telescopes are so powerful, images of planets light year away, look like this: http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/images/future-extrasolar-planet-detection.jpg

t:

Source is www.futuretimeline.net

Love that website, been going there for about two years.

 

[BrollySupersj]

When I first found it. I browsed it for like 2 hours. Remarkable website.

 

[:eek:]

60 Billion Alien Planets Could Support Life, Study Suggests

http://www.space.com/21800-alien-planets-60-billion-habitable-exoplanets.html

 

[redhawk23]

I agree as well. If we can't do it right and do it big, we shouldn't bother.

Those are pretty large leaps in tech that aren't entirely necessary to get to Mars.

 

[redhawk23]

Meh...seeing pin dot sized lights in the sky and calling them "earth-like planets" is stretching it a little. Wake me up when we actually arrive at one of these planets.

They don't necessarily mean that they are water covered totally earth like planets.

They mean they are rocky planets of a certain size and mass that lie within a certain distance of their suns that we believe to be habitable zone. Considering that just a few years ago we were incapable of finding anything but the largest of gas giants, the fact that we are now finding planets of the above criteria in such numbers is significant.

 

[:eek:]

Mysterious Deep-Space Explosions Baffle Scientists

http://www.space.com/21861-deep-space-radio-explosions-mystery.html

 

[zeroapoc]

So it's something different from a Gamma Ray Burst?

 

[zeroapoc]

60 Billion Alien Planets Could Support Life, Study Suggests

http://www.space.com/21800-alien-planets-60-billion-habitable-exoplanets.html

Wow. And that estimate is just in the Milky Way.

Again though is seems most of this news is concerning Red Dwarfs. I wish we were getting more news about planets around sun-like stars.

 

[Morg]

That's a big baby!

 

[Bim]

That's a big baby!

That's one heck of a baby lol

Now this is a curious bit of news!
http://science.nasa.gov/science-new...buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

NASA Spacecraft Maps the Solar System's Tail

July 10, 2013: Like a comet, the solar system has a tail. NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has for the first time mapped out the structure of this tail, which is shaped like a four-leaf clover.

Scientists describe the tail, called the heliotail, based on the first three years of IBEX imagery in a paper published in the July 10 edition of the Astrophysical Journal.

While telescopes have spotted such tails around other stars, it has been difficult to see whether our star produced one. The particles found in the tail -- and throughout the entire heliosphere, the region of space influenced by our sun -- do not shine, so they cannot be seen with conventional instruments.

"By examining the neutral atoms, IBEX has made the first observations of the heliotail," said David McComas, IBEX principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and the paper's lead author. "Many models have suggested the heliotail might look like this or like that, but we have had no observations. We always drew pictures where the tail of the solar system just trailed off the page, since we couldn't even speculate about what it really looked like."

IBEX measures the neutral particles created by collisions at the solar system's boundaries. This technique, called energetic neutral atom imaging, relies on the fact that the paths of neutral particles are not affected by the solar magnetic field. Instead, the particles travel in a straight line from collision to IBEX. Consequently, observing where the neutral particles came from describes what is going on in these distant regions.

"Since first light in 2008, the IBEX mission team has amazed us with its discoveries at the interstellar boundary, including a previously unknown ribbon of energetic neutral particles stretching across it," said Arik Posner, NASA's IBEX program scientist in Washington. "The new IBEX image of the heliotail fills in a previously blank area on the map. We are first-hand witnesses of rapid progress in heliophysics science."

By combining observations from the first three years of IBEX imagery, the team showed a tail with a combination of fast and slow moving particles. There are two lobes of slower particles on the sides and faster particles above and below. This four-leaf clover shape can be attributed to the fact that the sun has been sending out fast solar wind near its poles and slower wind near its equator for the last few years. This is a common pattern in the most recent phase of the sun's 11-year activity cycle.

The clover shape does not align perfectly with the solar system, however. The entire shape is rotated slightly, indicating that as it moves further away from the sun and its magnetic influence, the charged particles begin to be nudged into a new orientation, aligning with the magnetic fields from the local galaxy.

Scientists do not know how long the tail is, but think that it eventually fades away and becomes indistinguishable from the rest of interstellar space. Scientists are testing their current computer simulations of the solar system against the new observations to improve our understanding of the comet-like tail streaming out behind us.

For more information about the IBEX mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ibex

You can see a video in the original article's link t:

 

[Thundercrack85]

It is quite possible that suns like our own having habitable planets are quite rare (as opposed to red dwarfs). Not really sure how different life that evolved around a red dwarf would be.

Plus then there's the potential for habitable moons.